Category

Whispers of the soul

What can a lesbian young girl do in Iran ? How can she live, love and make a living without marring? Sahar is 17 years old, her mother dies and she lives with her depressed father and above all, she is in love with her best friend, who happens to be a girl : Nasrin.

If you could be mine by Sara Farizan tells the opposites attract story of Sahar and Nasrin, best fiends since childhood, mainly since they were 6 years old, Sahar even remembers that since she and Nasrin were 6 years old she had wanted to marry her. She has even told her mother that she wants to marry Nasrin, but her mother told her not to think nor speak about that again.

Sahar’s parents loved each other very much, her mother’s family was rich, while her father’s wasn’t and they actually married for love, but her mother’s family disowned her and they lived without a great wealth. Everything went well and they have lived happily in their Teheran apartment, until her mother died and their world fall apart. Her father barely spoke to Sahar and Sahar relied on Nasrin, her best friend. Sahar is a smart, average young woman who wants to be a doctor. She is almost 18 and studies hard to go to the best college in Iran to be a doctor.

Nasrin is a very beautiful young woman, clever, but not really interested in school, yet very much interested in fashion, make up and she is very interested in always looking amazing, yet sometimes even breaking the rules : for example in Iran a woman can be arrested if her elbows are showing (Sahar has to lie to the police that her clothes shirnk in the wash and she hadn’t time to change them). It may seem funny, but it is grotesque on how the women are being treated there.

Nasrin’s family , the Mehndi’s, are rich and their condition is far over Sahar’s, yet Nasrin’s parents don’t love each other, they had an arranged marriage, but her father is a pistacchio merchant and he earns a lot and they can afford many things Sahar’s family cannot. Nasrin’s mother wants her to be married as soon as possible, while her brothers have lazy lived sustained by the family.

Sahar and Nasrin have very deep, beyond friendship feelings and their love is confessed in secret, they even share stolen kisses and hot embraces during their “study hours”, but Nasrin doesn’t wants to discuss how their live together can be.

The turning point is the moment when Nasrin’s engagement to Reza, a young doctor, is announced during a family dinner.

Nasrin didn’t tell Sahar about it and Sahar felt hurt and realized she didn’t want to recognize the roles each of them played in their relationship. As her cousin Ali told her : Sahar is Nasrin’s puppy, following her everywhere, her wishes are commands to her and not getting anything in return. Nasrin was selfish, she wanted to have all the attention to herself. Sahar was the opposite. But, she had no doubt that Nasrin loved her, but what could they do? What could she do to stop the wedding and have Nasrin to herself?

Ali, Sahar’s cousin is a student, theoretically, but practically he is a pimp for : Mother and Daughter and a sort of obscure drug dealer and a gay and transsexual party thrower. He seems to have many aquintaces and one of them will become Sahar’s friend : Parveen. Oh, and Ali is very much gay.

Parveen is a different story, she was a he before the sex change operation. Parveen is a very beautiful woman, feminine and possessing all the skills to be a fashionable one to. She was a man before she knew she is transsexual and did not feel comfortable in her own body, she decided to have the change and she is now a selfconscient woman.

Sahar met Parveen at one of Ali’s parties and he told her Parveen is transsexual and then the thought flourished in Sahar’s head : the only way to stop Nasrin’s wedding was that she , herself, would become a man. That’s why she attended Parveen’s group meetings with other transsexuals and Sahar told them she wanted to become a transsexual in a month. Parveen tried to explain this isn’t physically nor psychologically possible, but Sahar went on and even went to a sex change clinic in Teheran.

The authorities allowed sex change clinics , because the sex change was allowed as the cure to the desease. They were all sick and had to be treated this way.

At the clinic, when she waited for her turn to talk to the surgeon, Sahar meets Reza, Nasrin’s fiannce . Fate made them meet there and complicate the story even more. Of course, Sahar didn’t do the sex change operation and Reza never spoke to Sahar about their meeting there, he hasn’t even told Nasrin. Sahar did. And Sahar also told Nasrin she couldn’t stop her wedding and they stood apart a while. In all this time Sahar had to focus on study and thought a lot about her relationship with Nasrin. Sahar knew their last meeting was about to happen, so she planned it carefully, while she talked to Ali on fleeing the country and go to Turkey.

Sahar and Nasrin’s last meeting before the weeding was very emotional and breathtaking, but Sahar learned that she had to break free. She didn’t fled to Turkey, because of the pleading of her father and she even attended Nasrin’s wedding.

The big surprise was Nasrin’s mother : she knew about Sahar and Nasrin’s love for each other and she told Sahar that she had to find Nasrin a husband in order to stop this. And she made it. She even made the day and the night the worse of Sahar’s life.

Sahar and Nasrin stood apart for the rest of the upcoming period. Sahar is now in college and Nasrin is happily married to Reza. Until one evening when a desperate Reza came to Sahar pleading her to see Nasrin. Of course, it was all about Nasrin again. At first, I thought she missed Sahar and wanted to leave everything behind and run away with her, but instead Nasrin felt bad and she was helpless and in need for a knight in shining armor to rescue her : she was just pregnant and scared. I think that were Sahar’s mere thoughts. When she realized what is going on, Sahar played the best friend part and after leaving Nasrin safe and sound at home with her husband, she realized how free she is and how fortunate to be in college, follow her dream to become a doctor and how lucky she was to have a colleague student that had a crush on her.

Advertisements

Rate this:

Share this:

Like this:

Angela’s story

“When I was growing up my parents fought a lot so I spent a lot of time at my best friend’s house. Her family was very evangelical and I remember her dad coming into the room and telling us it was ‘not right and not normal’ for us to be sleeping so close together. When her mom told us we had to stop spending too much time together it broke my heart. They would tell us that homosexuality is unnatural and sinful and even though I’m not a Christian I feel like their words got engrained inside of me for quite a number of years because I felt a deep sense of shame about myself for being attracted to women. As I got older I had other friends who were straight, or mostly straight, and we often found ourselves sleeping in the same bed. On multiple occasions I was told by them to ‘give them some more space.’ That would always hurt a lot. Looking back, I understand now that I had crushes on all these friends, but at the time I was deeply embarrassed to admit it and fearful of destroying my friendships if I expressed any hint of attraction.

When I turned 22 I started a four year relationship with a man. I thought I was too much of a man-hater and that I needed to give men a chance. Four awkward and turbulent years later, I finally accepted that men and I were simply not going to work together.
The first time I fell in love with a woman, the entire world suddenly made more sense. A sense of beauty and meaning overwhelmed me in our short yet forever life-changing relationship. I finally understood why there were so many love songs in the world, and love poems, and why people felt so strongly about having a partner or a passionate love-fling. I used to think romance was a collective expression of obsession or insanity. Suddenly I understood that it can be so much more than that.

When my relationship came to a close, I decided to create Lesbihonest Podcast to share my own experiences and those of other lesbians. My first episode was called “How to Survive a Lesbian Breakup,” which thankfully I did, and since then I have traveled to France, scotland, ireland, Czech Republic, hungary, Poland and Spain talking to other women about lesbian rights, culture and visibility in their countries.

The queer scene both in the United States and in Europe has been a bit harder to navigate than I would have ever expected. As a mostly feminine-presenting woman, I’ve often been mistaken for straight even by other lesbians, and meeting other feminine-presenting lesbians to date has been a challenge. Yet I know that there are far more pressing challenges faced by the LGBTQ community, which I strive to expose and explore in my podcast.

Angela is a lesbian woman currently residing in California. Her podcast can be found at thelesbihonestproject.com.”

Rate this:

Share this:

Like this:

“When did you last see your mother? Someone asked me. Someone who was walking with me in the city. I didn’t want to tell her; I thought in this city, a past was precisely that. Past. Why do I have to remember? In the old world, anyone could be a new creation, the past was washed away. Why should the new world be so inquisitive?

Don’t you ever think of going back?

Silly question. There are threads that help you find your way back, and there are threads that intend to bring you back. Mind turns to the pull, it’s hard to pull away. I’m always thinking of going back. When Lot’s wife looked over her shoulder, she turned into a pillar of salt. Pillars hold things up, and salt keeps things clean, but it’s a poor exchange for losing yourself. People do go back, but they don’t survive, because two realities are claiming them in the same time. Such things are too much. You can salt your heart, or kill your heart, or you can choose between the two realities. There is much pain here. Some people think you can have the cake and eat it. The cake goes mouldy and they choke on what’s left. Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.”

“Oranges are not the only fruit” by Jeanette Winterson is a lesbian classic book. After it was released it was set next to cooking books in the libraries’ bookshelves. It would be funny if it wouldn’t be tragic.

Jeanette Winterson tells her own life story and the book is a memoir, rather close to a confession. There are many themes and motifs enveloped in her confession especially from her childhood : Jeanette has spent a lot of time in an industrial town in England in her adoptive parents’ house. Her mother is the main character in little Jeanette’s life and instead of a playful childhood, Jeanette is dragged in an over-religious world her mother created : her mother brought her up as one of God’s elects and raised Jeanette as being destined to be God’s missionary. In her zealously, Jeanette’s mother offers her only oranges as the only fruit, a symbol of that Jeanette should always do as she is told, by herself in a religious excess and human obsession – the oranges represent heterosexuality.

Jeanette doesn’t even go to school until the authorities oblige her adoptive mother to and school is also a bad experience for a religiously inoculated Jeanette, who ends being marginalized and laughed at by her colleagues. Her mother is not interested in anything but religion, religious societies and missionary priests. To please her mother, Jeanette takes her role seriously and helps in converting other people to, but the turning point is when she falls in love with one of the converts, Melanie and although she can’t tell what it means, she understands her mother will hate her for it, but her secret is discovered by her mother and starting now, Jeanette’s image is changed in her mother’s eyes and starts becoming an outcast at home.

There are many characters in the book that sustain the two main characters : overzealous women from the church, the two ladies from the newspaper shop that love unholy, Elsie, Janette’s old friend, Melanie and the pastors. The book has chapters as the Bible has in the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, obviously the Bible holds a great deal in Jeanette’s life, especially in her childhood, but she doesn’t only obey it, but also she questions it, disagrees with her mother and the pastors, starting with the moment when she is accused as being unholy when she falls for a woman and her mother realizes she cannot be the missionary she was raised for to be.

Her mother wants Jeanette to go away from home, she doesn’t want her here to ruin the plans she has left for the church or the missionary societies she fights for. She doesn’t care about Jeanette’s feelings, Jeanette’s dreams or desires as a young woman to evolve and do something with her life searching her talents. Because she ruined her mother’s dream who raised her to become a missionary, her mother’s unfulfilled dream herself, she threw Jeanette away. That proves she only used Jeanette for her selfish misfortune.

Jeanette leaves home at 16 years old and works hard to sustain herself. It doesn’t matter, because she was out of a toxic environment that treated her as an outcast anyway. She works hard because she knows this is the only way she can follow her heart, her dreams and to end up in the big city. She won’t end up with Melanie nor other converts, but she will find love in the big city.

I loved how the author sees her story within a fantastic story of Winnet, a sorcerer’s apprentice, who will have to choose between the castle and the village, who will choose the village instead of her heart to become of stone. Living in the village, working hard she hears of the big city and all the possibilities it holds for her dream and will face many obstacles to end up there and become free and live the way she wants. The story is a metaphor for Jeanette’s real life story.

I loved the way the story was told, I enjoyed the characters and the main theme: to sacrifice her comfort, her past, her childhood home and her mother’s love to pursue her heart and her dreams.

“I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other’s names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name.”

Like this:

The subject of the movie it’s not one that I expected : a mixed feelings and thoughtful characters drama about a woman returning home to the Orthodox Jewish community of north London – I love the mystery around Ronit leaving London for New York, the strengths and weaknesses of Ronit and Estie’s friendship and Dovid and Ronit’s evolving characters, as now, Estie is Dovid’s wife.

I can’t wait to watch this beautiful movie!!!

The title suggests rebellion, fear, love lost and growing as an adult :

“the question of whose disobedience, and what kind of disobedience it is, are at the heart of this absorbing and moving love story from Chilean director Sebastián Lelio, his English language debut, following very quickly on the heels of his film A Fantastic Woman which has been a festival-circuit hit this year.

Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams and Alessandro Nivola are at the top of their game, perhaps especially Nivola in a supporting role; he achieves a sympathy and maturity that I have never seen from him before.

The drama takes place in the Orthodox Jewish community of north London. Weisz is Ronit, a young woman we see initially in New York: a photographer evidently living a fashionable and bohemian lifestyle. Out of the blue, she receives some bad news from back home, and her first impulse is to try to anesthetize the pain with drink and casual sex. But the truth must be faced up to, and a much-feared homecoming is necessary. Because she has learned of the death of her father, a much-respected rabbi: a fierce, potent cameo for Anton Lesser.

It was partly to escape the stifling rigidity of her father’s values that Ronit fled London for a secular life in New York in the first place: defiant, relishing freedom, but nursing a wound of guilt for breaking her father’s heart; she was an only child and he a widower. Ronit was all he had left.

Back in London for the various ceremonies – the very epitome of the religious observance and obedience that she had wanted to get away from – Ronit feels all eyes on her: curious, and disapproving, but in a way cowed by her authentic connection with this revered religious leader. People have a habit of remarking, in tones of awe, how much she resembles her late mother. Weisz conveys her grief, her disorientation, her borderline-hysterical need to mock the pities.

Ronit is disturbed most by two friends from the old days, from whom she senses a nervous disapproval. One his Dovid (Alessandro Nivola), her father’s favourite pupil, a virtual adopted son who is now a much admired young rabbi himself. The other is Esti, beautifully played by Rachel McAdams, who was Ronit’s only ally in youthful rebelliousness back in the day. But now, Esti is married to Dovid and Ronit is clearly shocked by how much older they seem, how much more conservative, how greater the gulf is between them, and by that token how much more intense her loneliness and grief then feels.

But Lelio’s drama is not simply about this, because it is clear that Esti is not in fact so estranged from Ronit as first appeared, and this homecoming triggers a new independence of mind in her that makes everyone very uneasy. The truth is that Ronit and Esti were more than friends – and it wasn’t just religion she was fleeing but forbidden love. They could easily be more than friends again and the movie adroitly lets us decide just how open a secret their relationship always was.

There an overwhelming passion and eroticism to this reunion, especially in contrast to the dutiful marital lovemaking between Dovid and Esti which Lelio had already shown us: trying of course for a baby. In the bedroom, before sex, Esti had listlessly removed not just her clothes but her wig: the badge of female piety. One of Ronit’s most misjudged attempts at diplomacy is to try wearing a wig herself, a temporary gesture which succeeds only in irritating everyone and reminding her late father’s friends how much they still resent her desertion.

The poignancy of her dad’s modest family home and his death bed, moved downstairs to the front room in his final days, reinforces the severity and austerity of Ronit’s family background – and also how sensationally transgressive her renewed affair with Esti is. McAdams herself is excellent at suggesting how with sheer force of will and learned piety she had got her life together while Ronit was away and is now a schoolteacher. We see her leading a class in discussing Shakespeare’s Othello. The choice of play interestingly leads the audience to wonder how Dovid is going to take the news of his wife’s adventure.

Dovid himself is a wiry, muscular warrior of the faith. But he is not a tyrant or a bully and he is himself conflicted in various ways about Ronit’s reappearance. Rather daringly, he is teaching the Song Of Songs in his own scriptural class and permitting candid discussion of its erotic qualities.

The drama is expertly controlled by Lelio, lit and shot in muted and subdued colour tones by cinematographer Danny Cohen and it has a very interesting musical score by Matthew Herbert; its musing and almost playful woodwind figures cut against the expected sombreness and obvious melancholy to contribute to this sense of disorientation and subversion. This is richly satisfying and powerfully acted work.

Disobedience is screening at the Toronto film festival and will be released in the UK on 4 May with a US date yet to be announced. “

Rate this:

Share this:

Like this:

The interwar lovestory between Celia and Aurora (#Aurelia) from the Spanish series Six Sisters (Seis Hermanas) is a painting within a painting.

This is the love story between two women from different social classes during the 1913-1916 Spain, when the women had no right to vote, they just have to marry and bear children and take care of their husbands. Celia (played by Candela Serrat) is one of the six daughters of the Silva family, a very respected family in Madrid during those times, who happens to love women and she falls in love with her best friend Petra, but Petra is straight and instead of helping Celia she tells everybody, including Celia’s sisters, that Celia is sick and needs psychiatric treatment.

Celia has to go through a terrible treatment to be “healed” of unproper feelings towards women. At the psychiatrist’s she meets a very friendly nurse, Aurora Alarcon, who helps her through the treatment and even gives her the solution to get out of it: a presumed boyfriend who can tell the doctor that Celia is cured and their relationship is real.

With Aurora’s help, Celia escapes the horrid mistreatment of electric shocks and gets real close to Aurora (played by Luz Valdenebro) who will show her what love can really be and how wonderful it is to be in love and be loved. Aurora confesses she has been through the same treatment because she also loves women and she chose her career of being a nurse to help all the women like her.

She will also introduce Celia in the suffragist movement that fought for women’s rights to vote and to have the right to inheritance of their own, because for now they will have the right for their father’s inheritance only after they marry and the fortune will go to their husband.

The main painting represents the story of the Silva sisters set in the interwar period in Madrid 1913-1916 :

Adela (Celia Freijeiro), the older sister, the fundamental pillar of the Silva sisters, is one of the most elegant and admired women of the high society of the moment; takes most decisions, is correct, generous, loving and kind; Very young widow, believes that love will never touch her door again; Blanca (Mariona Tena), is beautiful, classy, kind, elegant and educated, engaged to the rich banker Rodolfo Loygorri (Fernando Andina), minister of foreign affairs, but in love with her brother-in-law, doctor Cristóbal Loygorri; Diana (Marta Larralde), of strong character, replaces her father at the head of the factory of the Silva family, is the entrepreneurial sister, believes that she underestimates the woman and, although she does not count on finding the love of her life, her Destiny has different plans for her; Francisca (María Castro), sings in secret in the Ambigú but her dream is to sing for a more select audience; Celia (Candela Serrat), loves letters, studied teaching and her dream is to continue studying, writing and knowing the world. Later she discovers that she feels a feeling of love towards her worker friend Petra; and Elisa (Carla Díaz), is the small sister, spoiled, irascible and immature, dreams of finding a man of good position with whom he can start a family.

The six sisters go from being high class women without any concern to direct the textile factory and business of his father, Mr. Fernando Silva, after the sudden death of this, in a society in which women have neither right to vote, dependent on their uncle, because they were denied the right of inheritance or holding the right on any property.

Celia Silva is a school teacher with the dream that one day she will be a writer with the same right as men to vote and to be free, and to love Aurora freely. Their love is real, passionate, based on two intelligent and highly educated women of those times. Aurora works at private practices or at hospitals and earns her own wage, yet far smaller than a man would do.

For now, Celia is a school teacher and Aurora is a nurse, their love is hidden, but real, yet Aurora has much more experience and realizes that Celia can still have certain feelings for her first love, Petra and somehow their hidden love, fulfilled by desire, has an abrupt stop now, when Aurora needs to go back home at a small town near Madrid called Caceres and marry a man to help her family. Celia is devastated yet she continues to fight for women’s rights and poor children’s rights to learn the same things as the rich ones. Somehow she backsides Aurora and now she finds herself abandoned by her one and truly love.

After hard times she had to live back home at Caceres to live with a husband she doesn’t love, her mind being set back to Celia, Aurora leaves her husband and returns to Madrid into Celia’s arms, her one and truly love. Yet, Aurora bears her husband’s child and her escape won’t go unnoticed, and her husband persuades her wherever she will go.

Aurora and Celia leave Madrid for a small town near Madrid (Araganzuela) where Celia teaches at school and Aurora keeps searching for work at local private practices. This is the best period for the two women, although they have a hard life and hard times, living in a small one bedroom home and being persuaded by many bad intended people : Celia’s brother in law, Celia’s Marina…. And Aurora’s husband. Aurora is being accused by a patient’s husband that she deliberately killed her, while the patient died of an undiagnosed diabethes. Aurora gets hit in the head by someone unknown and after some time her bay will be stillborn. There are many tragedies, so many that it is hard to even imagine to have lived like that and get through so many tragedies. I remember the moment, when Aurora’s husband Clemente finds out about Celia and Aurora’s lesbian relationship and when he threatens them with a gun and takes Aurora away.

Celia writes articles in the local newspaper, but then someone else seems to write them for her and trashes her name Silva into mud for disgracing men or the story of their neighbors, which end to be read by Aurora’s brother and husband, and they end up finding them and they need to fled again.

I loved the moment when Aurora proposes Celia to be her wife and they end up going to war.

Unfortunately, the love story between Celia and Aurora has a bad ending, because Aurora will die of cholera and leaves an disconsolate Celia alone and unloved with a huge hole in her heart.

During the next episodes Celia will find another woman to love, Cata, but it will never compare to Aurora’s love, everything else pales in comparison. Why was their story cut this way???

The abrupt end of Celia and Aurora’s love story have brought many questions in the fans community : why their love was such a tragedy all over ? why did Aurora had to die that way? Why couldn’t it there be a happy end of a lesbian love in Spanish TV?

The tragic end of Celia and Aurora’s love story : Aurora dies of cholera during the war looks so much like the death of Cristina from the love story between Cristina and Isabel from Tierra de lobos.

Why can’t we see in Spanish TV an not alone Spanish Tv, but TV in general, lesbian stories with happy endings!!!!!???

The interwar lesbian lovestory of Aurora and Celia has substance and essence. but it lacks continuity and realism. Tragedy and concessions from their parts can be understood, they have to give up so much and so many in the name of their love and suffer so much more for their love and in the end …there is only death and remembrance. It’s unfair.

Rate this:

Share this:

Like this:

Alice (Kristianna Loken) is a ghostwriter for a famous author and she faces the writer’s block after a terrible accident she has suffered and became amnesiac (On waking up she had lost part of her memory and has no recollection of the accident and her stay in Malta). She is halfway through the work of his new book, but cannot write anymore.

A year has passed since she had a terrible accident in Malta where she was staying with her husband Max (Antonio Cupo) in his family villa and was in a coma for two weeks. Since then, she has been suffering from depression and has recurrent and cryptic nightmares. Max, who also is her agent, persuades her to go back to Malta in the hopes that something will unblock her mind so she can start working again and meet her deadline.

Here she meets the beautiful stranger Mediterranean girl, Sara (Sarai Givaty) Max has hired to help around the house, that will seduce her in every way that she can, but certainly holds a secret, we all have secrets. The amazing love affair seems to help Alice’s writer block and also make her fall in love with Sara.

There is going to be a murder. Who is murderer? Will Alice overcome the writer’s block? Will her love affair with Sara last or was it just a fling?

Rate this:

Share this:

Like this:

Suffragism was the beginning of the feminist movement and suffragettes were the first modern feminists.

Famous Suffragists and suffragettes:

Susan B. Anthony, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, began working to establish women’s right to vote in the mid-1800s. Unfortunately, Anthony never saw the impact of her efforts—the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, was passed on August 26, 1920, more than a decade after Anthony’s death—but her activism remains one of the most important stories in women’s history. Explore this group to learn more about Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and other leading suffragettes, including Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Alice Paul, Dorothy Day, Amelia Bloomer and Jeannette Rankin.

Anne Dallas Dudley (1876–1955) – suffrage activist; in 1920, she, along with Abby Crawford Milton and Catherine Talty Kenny, led the campaign in Tennessee to approve ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution[7][8]

Lillian Feickert (1877–1945) – suffragette; first woman from New Jersey to run for United States Senate[9]

Sara Bard Field (1882–1974) – active with the National Advisory Council, National Woman’s Party, and in Oregon and Nevada; crossed the US to deliver a petition with 500,000 signatures to President Wilson

Clara Chan Lee (1886–1993) – first Chinese American to register to vote in the US, November 8, 1911[10]

Dora Lewis (1862-1928) – in 1913 became an executive member of the National Women’s Party; in 1918 became their chairwoman of finance; in 1919 became their national treasurer; in 1920 headed their ratification committee

Harriet May Mills (1857–1936) – prominent civil rights leader, played a major role in women’s rights movement

Abby Crawford Milton (1881-1991) – traveled throughout Tennessee making speeches and organizing suffrage leagues in small communities; in 1920, she, along with Anne Dallas Dudley and Catherine Talty Kenny, led the campaign in Tennessee to approve ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution[7][8]

Victoria Woodhull (1838–1927) – women’s rights activist, first woman to speak before a committee of Congress, first female candidate for President of the United States, one of the first women to start a weekly newspaper (Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly,) activist for labor reforms, advocate of free love

The most famous suffragist is Emmeline Pankhurst.

The nineteenth century was a time of social revolution. Social classes came into conflict across Europe as people realised that they were entitled to more than society was prepared to give them. The women’s movement was no different. In the late 1800’s women realized that they too deserved more; they wanted to be considered equals in society.

Middle and upper class women started making public speeches demanding Women’s Suffrage – the right to vote alongside men – but as the movement progressed some women decided to become more militant. This escalated tension, as well as demonstrating their devotion to the cause. Dubbed ‘Suffragettes’ their revolutionary ideas encouraged many women and some men to devote themselves wholeheartedly to the cause.

The success of the Suffragettes’ movement was one that can be attributed to its leaders. A number of strong individuals organised, drove change and eventually realised their hopes of equal rights. These great minds provided the impetus the revolution needed. Among these demonstrators were Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, Annie Kenney, Constance Lytton, and Emily Davison. These women, along with many others across the United Kingdom, united to fight for women’s rights.

Emmeline Pankhurst

Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928), of Manchester, was one of the leading women’s rights activists of her time. She led the movement that eventually allowed women to gain the right to vote. She was married to Richard Pankhurst, who was a lawyer and a supporter of the Suffragettes. He supported Emmeline in her revolution and together they fought against the strictures of Victorian Society. Richard’s death in 1898 took Emmeline by surprise, but she carried on towards accomplishing her goals of suffrage. Emmeline founded the women’s franchise league, which allowed married women to vote in local elections in 1889.

Emmeline helped found the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903. This union proved to be almost too militant for its own good. Emmeline actively led this group – of newly named Suffragettes – on many protests. Many of these protests were followed by imprisonment and hunger strikes. Emmeline was arrested many times and herself participated in the strikes. Notoriously, the hunger strikes lead to force feeding of the women within the prisons. These graphic police tactics shocked many members of the public, offended by their use in a civilised society. It was later outlawed under the Cat and Mouse Act of 1913.

Emmeline Pankhurst was a remarkable woman who put all of her efforts into her cause. Yet, when the Great War broke out in August 1914 she – like many Suffragettes – decided to turn her energies towards the war effort. A few years after the war women were granted the right to vote. Emmeline had lived to see the day. She died ten years later in 1928, still fighting for women’s rights.

Christabel Pankhurst

Christabel Pankhurst (1880-1958) was the daughter of Richard and Emmeline Pankhurst. Christabel was one of the most vociferous members of the Suffragette movement. She was born in Manchester, where her father’s radical social views influenced her greatly. Her surroundings and upbringing played a large part in forming her early political and social views. In 1901 she was introduced to the views of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Society. Christabel thought that their views were intriguing, but felt that they needed to be more aggressive in their cause. Verbal arguments were not enough to promote the kind of change that Christabel wanted to pursue.

With many influences around her, no one shaped her like her mother, Emmeline Pankhurst. Together they were also founder members of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903. She was arrested, with Annie Kenney, for interrupting a meeting of the Liberal Party. The Suffragettes were imprisoned. Christabel was arrested many times and even left the country to escape further imprisonment in 1912. In 1906 she was awarded a law degree from Manchester University. She then moved to London, and was named the organizing secretary of the WSPU.

Christabel helped form the goals of the Union: it was necessary to become disruptive in order to achive lasting change. New tactics were agreed, including stone throwing, the breaking of shop windows using hammers secreted in handbags, arson and attacking politicians. Her efforts against the state were unceasing, although, like her mother, she supported the war in 1914. After the war she continued her efforts. Today she is regarded as a model for suffrage movements all over the world.

Annie Kenney

Annie Kenney (1879-1953) was compared by WT Stead to Joan of Arc, and Josephine Butler described her as: “A woman of refinement and of delicacy of manner and of speech. Her physique is slender, and she is intensively nervous and high strung. She vibrates like a harp string to every story of oppression.”

Annie was born near Oldham and worked in a local cotton mill. In 1905 her sisters convinced her to go to a meeting where Christabel Pankhurst was speaking about women’s suffrage. Annie promised Christabel that she would bring along women from the factory to have a meeting. The meeting turned out to be a great success.

Annie joined the WPSU in 1905 and her involvement only grew from then on. She attended a Liberal rally with Christabel Pankhurst at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, where the two ladies were going to ask Winston Churchill and Sir Edward Grey what they would do for women’s suffrage. When there was no reply they released a banner that said “Votes for Women”. They were kicked out of the meeting and then arrested and charged with assault.

Throughout the movement she was charged with many offences and participated in the hunger strikes, which she never fully recovered from. When Christabel went to France to escape imprisonment in 1912, Annie was put in charge of the WSPU. Annie saw Christabel as a great leader and heroine and imitated her activities for women’s suffrage until her death in 1953.

Lady Constance Lytton

Constance Lytton (1869-1923) was a Suffragette activist, writer, speaker and campaigner for prison reform, votes for women and birth control. The daughter of Lord Lytton, Constance came from the British aristocracy. In order not to receive special treatment she worked under an alias, Jane Warton. This allowed her avoid charges that she was part of the elite and gave her the opportunity to be an activist with no special privileges.

In 1909 she became a member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). In 1911 she was imprisoned in Holloway Prison and went on hunger strike. Her identity was discovered by the prison authorities and she was released. Enraged by this, she criticized the decision by writing to the Daily Liverpool Post. Like most Suffragettes, she was imprisoned many times and was involved in self mutilation and hunger strikes.

Constance wrote about all of her experiences and publicised them in several newspapers. This contributed to the growth of the suffrage campaign and allowed it to reach more potential activists. Lady Constance died at the early age of 54. Partly because of her involvement in the hunger strikes she never fully regained her health.

Emily Davison

Emily Davison (1872-1913) was born in Blackheath, South London. She studied at Oxford University, although women were not allowed to receive degrees at that time. In 1906 she joined the WSPU and gave up her job to devote herself to the Suffragette movement. She was arrested on many occasions and in 1909 was jailed in Strangeways Prison in Manchester, where she promptly went on hunger strike. She became a very militant Suffragette.

In 1913, Emily stepped into the path of the King’s Horse during the Epsom Derby and attempted to catch its reins as it passed. She was badly injured from the collision and died from her injuries on 8 June. Her purpose was not clear, but she did cross boundaries in order to demonstrate her devotion to the cause and allowed others to see the seriousness of the Suffragettes.

Black Friday 1910

The Suffragettes carried out several demonstrations to support their cause during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The acts were designed to widen understanding of their cause and demonstrate their absolute devotion. The first Suffragette protest involving the Metropolitan Police, known as Black Friday, was held at Westminster in 1910. 300 Suffragettes and 6,000 policemen were present at the protest. Many women were arrested and assaulted during this day of action. They were protesting Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith’s decision to shelve the so-called Conciliation Bill. This bill aimed to extend the vote to over one million land owning women in Britain. Many women were outraged and the Women’s Social and Political Union took direct action.

The women of the WSPU chained themselves to railings, smashed windows and disrupted public meetings. The women’s Union was unpopular at the time and over 200 protesters were arrested. Others were assaulted and viciously manhandled by a large crowd of onlookers. As a result of Black Friday, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was forced to promise a bill devoted to women’s suffrage. It would be David Lloyd George, Asquith’s successor as Prime Minister, who would eventually introduce women’s suffrage legislation.

The Cat and Mouse Act

The Prisoners Act of 1913, also known as the Cat and Mouse Act, was an Act of Parliament, passed by Herbert Asquiths’s Liberal government, that outlawed force feeding in prisons. The Act allowed those on hunger strike to be temporarily discharged from prison for illness, and then re-imprisoned when they regained their health. The Liberal government’s aim with the Act was to suppress the Women’s Social and Political Union as a threat to society. Yet the Act was difficult to enforce: the police found it hard to re-arrest those who were pardoned from prison as suffragettes would either leave Britain or go into hiding.

The Act was referred to as the Cat and Mouse Act because it was thought that the police were playing with the Suffragettes much like a cat plays with a mouse. The Act caused profound WSPU resentment toward Prime Minister Asquith. The Prisoners Act did little to deter the Suffragettes from their activities. One year later, in 1914, the First World War broke out and most women devoted themselves to their country in its time of need. This put a temporary halt to the Suffragette movement, but they would prevail in their efforts years later.

The Representation of the People Act 1918

After the war ended in November 1918 the Representation of the People Act was overwhelmingly passed in the House of Commons. This act gave women with property, over the age of thirty, the right to vote. This was a conservative start but it was a milestone in the campaign to gain suffrage for women. Its passing was enabled by public recognition of the great work women had carried out during the Great War. This epic win for the Suffragettes snowballed into further future women’s rights measures.

The legacy of the Suffragettes is still evident today through the struggle for equal rights. Even though much has been overcome up to the present day, there is still room for improvement in equal rights. In 2012 activist Helen Pankhurst is still campaigning for the platforms of her great grandmother Emmeline Pankhurst.

Women’s rights have come a long way over the last one hundred years and are still evolving. The Suffragettes of the early twentieth century shaped today’s society and their impact on equal rights legislation persists, now and for the future.

Women’s movement during the 19th century

In the nineteenth century women had no place in national politics. They could not stand as candidates for Parliament. They were not even allowed to vote. It was assumed that women did not need the vote because their husbands would take responsibility in political matters. A woman’s role was seen to be child-rearing and taking care of the home.

As a result of the industrial revolution many women were in full-time employment, which meant they had opportunities to meet in large organized groups to discuss political and social issues.

Organized campaigns for women’s suffrage began to appear in 1866 and from 1888 women could vote in many local council elections. When parliamentary reform has been debated in 1867, John Stuart Mill proposed an amendment that would have given the vote to women on the same terms as men but it was rejected by 194 votes to 73. The campaign gained momentum after this.

Nineteenth century feminists talked about “The Cause”. This described a movement for women’s rights generally. It had no particular political focus. But by the close of the century the issue of the vote became the focus of women’s struggle for equality.

The movement to gain votes for women had two wings, the suffragists and the suffragettes.

The suffragists had their origins in the mid nineteenth century, while the suffragettes came into being in 1903.

The Suffragists

In 1897, various local women’s suffrage societies formed the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, under the leadership of Millicent Fawcett. The NUWSS wanted the vote for middle class property-owning women. They believed they would achieve their end using peaceful tactics – non-violent demonstrations, petitions and the lobbying of MPs. Fawcett believed that if the organisation was seen to be intelligent, polite and law-abiding then women would prove themselves responsible enough to participate fully in politics.

The leadership of the suffragists was exclusively middle class but some of the more radical members recognised early on that the movement needed the support of working class women. The issue of the franchise was drawing women of various sections of society together and giving them an identity which they had lacked until that time.

By 1900 there was already evidence that many Members of Parliament had been won over. Several Bills in favour of women’s suffrage gained considerable support in Parliament, though not enough to pass. Some believed it was only a matter of time until women would gain the vote.

At the end of 19 th century due to the inequality between women and men, men had the right to vote while women didn´t.
Only a few countries of the north of Europe and New Zeeland had accepted the women right to vote
“We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers.”

She was born in 1858, and she founded The Women’s Franchise League, promoted not only the breaking of the law but also hunger strikes in female prisons.

In 1881, the Isle of Man gave women who owned property the right to vote. In 1893, the British colony of New Zealand, granted women the right to vote. The colony of South Australia did the same in 1894 and women were able to vote in the next election, which was held in 1895. South Australia also permitted women to stand for election alongside men. In 1899 Western Australia enacted full women’s suffrage, enabling women to vote in the constitutional referendum of 31 July 1900 and the 1901 state and federal elections. In 1902 women in the remaining four colonies also acquired the right to vote and stand in federal elections after the six Australian colonies federated to become the Commonwealth of Australia. Discriminatory restrictions against Aboriginal people, including women, voting in national elections, were not completely removed until 1962.

In Romania, starting in 1929, women who met certain qualifications were allowed to vote in local elections. After the Constitution from 1938, the voting rights were extended to women for general elections by the Electoral Law 1939. Women could vote on equal terms with men, but both men and women had restrictions, and in practice the restrictions affected women more than men. In 1946, full equal voting rights were granted to men and women.Feminism in the 19th-century
19th-century feminists reacted to cultural inequities including the pernicious, widespread acceptance of the Victorian image of women.
Was an statistician who founded modern nursing and tried to reform the society.
Florence Nightingale

The suffragettes

The suffragettes, a name given to them by the newspaper The Daily Mail, were born out of the suffragist movement. Emmeline Pankhurst, who had been a member of the Manchester suffragist group, had grown impatient with the middle class, respectable, gradualist tactics of the NUWSS. In 1903 she decided to break with the NUWSS and set up a separate society. This became known as the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU).

Mrs Pankhurst believed it would take an active organisation, with young working class women, to draw attention to the cause. The motto of the suffragettes was deeds not words and from 1912 onwards they became more militant and violent in their methods of campaign. Law-breaking, violence and hunger strikes all became part of this society’s campaign tactics.

In 1907 the Women’s Social and Political Union itself split into two groups after Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel came into conflict with other members of the WSPU’s executive body. Those who left formed the Women’s Freedom League, while the Pankhursts and their supporters established an even tighter grip on the workings of the WSPU.

The three groups disagreed over tactics but their message was consistent and they regularly worked together. Despite opposition, the argument for women’s suffrage seemed to be winning support. By 1909 the WSPU had branches all over the country and published a newspaper called Votes for Women which sold 20,000 copies each week. The NUWSS was also flourishing, with a rising membership and an efficient nation-wide organisation.

The rough treatment of many suffragettes arrested and jailed during the course of their protests also won the suffrage cause increasing sympathy and support from the public. The commendable behaviour of the suffrage movement during the war – suspending their protests for the sake of national unity – also proved that the women were far from unreasonable.

Summary of the suffrage movement

Historians debate the effectiveness of the different groups in the struggle for women’s suffrage. Some modern historians argue that the influence of NUWSS has not been given enough credit. Membership of this organisation remained high throughout the period. Many women who became alienated from the suffragettes because of their militancy switched allegiance to the suffragists.

Even more controversial is the role of the WSPU. At the time, and ever since, there have been divisions of opinion: some argue that its activities were critical in keeping The Cause high on the political agenda; others believe that its violent tactics actually delayed votes for women by its “irresponsibility” in attacking private property.

When World War I broke out in 1914 the whole suffrage movement immediately scaled down and even suspended some of their activities in the face of a greater threat to the nation.

On 4 June 1913, Emily Wilding Davison travelled to Epsom Downs to watch the Derby, carrying two suffrage flags – one rolled tight in her hand, the other wrapped around her body, hidden beneath her coat. She waited at Tattenham Corner as the horses streamed past, then squeezed through the railings and made an apparent grab for the reins of the king’s horse, Anmer. In the Manchester Guardian in the next day, an eyewitness reported: “The horse fell on the woman and kicked out furiously”. News footage shows racegoers surging on to the track to find out what had happened.

Davison suffered a fractured skull and internal bleeding, and as hate mail against her poured in to the hospital, she remained unconscious. She died four days later. Thousands of suffragettes turned out on the London streets dressed in white, bearing laurel wreaths for her funeral. They marched four abreast behind purple banners, urging them all to fight on.

There has always been speculation about Davison’s intentions. The return train ticket she was carrying, for instance, offered as evidence that she didn’t mean to die. But there’s no doubt she was prepared to make dangerous sacrifices for women’s rights. As Fran Abrams writes in her book Freedom’s Cause, Davison had been imprisoned repeatedly for her suffrage work, had gone on hunger strike and been force fed numerous times.

In 1912, when she and a large number of other suffragettes were imprisoned in Holloway, there was what Davison referred to as a siege – the doors of women’s cells were broken down by guards – and she determined that one big tragedy might save her sisters. Davison threw herself over a balcony, was caught by some netting, then immediately tried again, launching herself down an iron staircase. This led to two cracked vertebrae, and a thwack to the head, but the authorities were unmoved. She and the other women continued to be force-fed, regularly and brutally.

In a movement defined by acts of daring, Davison’s bravery was extraordinary. A hundred years later, votes for women are long since won in most countries – though not all – and the feminist revolution continues. Campaigners worldwide fight for equal political representation, an end to women’s poverty, freedom from sexual violence, control over our own bodies, and – ultimately – for that most basic, yet radical, demand: for women to be treated as human beings. A century after Davison’s funeral programme declared “She died for women,” what can today’s feminists learn from the suffragettes?

Demands of the suffragettes

Find your voice, and use it

The dearth of women in public life today is often attributed to a lack of confidence, and the suffragettes sometimes struggled with this too. Margaret Wynne Nevinson, an avid campaigner, once wrote she felt a “dizzy sickness of terror” the first time she stood up to speak publicly, outside a gasworks in south London in 1906. There were shouts of derision as hundreds of men crowded around her, and she almost succumbed to stage fright before hearing a voice whisper: “Go it, old gal, you’re doing fine, give it ’em.”

This echoes the recollections of Kitty Marion, an actor as well as a suffragette. The first time she sold the Votes for Women newspaper in Piccadilly Circus, Marion wrote, “I felt as if every eye that looked at me was a dagger piercing me through and I wished the ground would open up and swallow me. However, that feeling wore off and I developed into quite a champion.”

Sweetness is overrated

Women were bound by feminine ideals at the start of the last century – expected to be submissive, nurturing, self-effacing – and we still are today. The suffragettes weren’t having it. As Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the militant suffragettes, once said, “We threw away all our conventional notions of what was ‘ladylike’ and ‘good form’, and we applied to our methods the one test question: will it help?”

This was echoed by Fred Pethick-Lawrence, who fought strongly for women’s votes alongside his wife – who was also called Emmeline. In his 1911 book, Women’s Fight for the Vote, he offered a rallying cry. “Nothing has done more to retard the progress of the human race than the exaltation of submission into a high and noble virtue,” he wrote. “It may often be expedient to submit; it may even sometimes be morally right to do so in order to avoid a greater evil; but submission is not inherently beautiful – it is generally cowardly and frequently morally wrong.”

Take strength from the haters

Anyone who writes about feminism online knows there can be a nasty response, and the suffragettes received hate mail too. In Joyce Marlow’s essential anthology, Votes for Women, from which many of these recollections are taken, she includes a letter sent to Hugh Franklin, a male suffrage activist, which has a strikingly familiar tone. “We would give you and old Mother Pankhurst (the fossil-worm) Five Years Penal Servitude and then burn you both together. YOU ARE A DIRTY TYKE AND DANGEROUS MADMAN.” (All emphases the writer’s own.)

But it wasn’t just hate mail they had to contend with. Rats would be let loose into suffrage meetings, while rotten eggs and fish were pelted at the women. Nevinson once wrote that they kept their eyesight largely as a result of the huge hats that were then fashionable, the wide brims saving them “from hard missiles and the cayenne pepper blown at us from bellows”.

Their detractors were often very powerful. Winston Churchill described the militant movement as a “copious fountain of mendacity”, while Arthur Conan Doyle opted for “female hooligans”. The only useful response was to take strength from the insults. The current deputy editor of the New Statesman, Helen Lewis, has written that today “the comments on any article about feminism justify feminism”, which mirrors Rebecca West’s reflections on events of a century ago. “The real force that made the suffrage movement was the quality of the opposition,” wrote West. “Women, listening to anti-suffrage speeches, for the first time knew what many men really thought of them.”

Accept that those haters will include other women

In a male-dominated society, women are often brought up to identify with men, to see men’s views and rights as paramount, and so it’s not surprising that many women oppose their own liberation. In the suffrage era the most prominent was Queen Victoria, who once wrote a letter stating she was “anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad wicked folly of ‘Woman’s Rights’, with all its attendant horrors, on which [my] poor sex is bent”.

There were a number of thriving anti-suffrage groups, including the National League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage, run by one Mrs Frederic Harrison, who stated: “Women have to destroy a women’s movement.” It rarely feels right to celebrate female failure, but in Harrison’s case let’s make an exception.

Fortune favours the brave

After a meeting of 30,000 suffragettes in 1906, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence said she had “never met anyone so fearless as were these young girls. I never saw a suffragette, under menace of violence, otherwise than cool and collected.”

Such bravery was necessary, as the women often faced serious violence. On 18 November 1910, for instance, a date which became known as Black Friday, Emmeline Pankhurst led 300 women to the House of Commons in a peaceful protest. There, they were met by police, and reported being beaten and sexually assaulted. One woman, quoted in Marlow’s anthology, said: “Constables and plain-clothes men who were in the crowd passed their arms round me from the back and clutched hold of my breasts in as public a manner as possible, and men in the crowd followed their example … My skirt was lifted up as high as possible, and the constable attempted to lift me off the ground by raising his knee. This he could not do, so he threw me into the crowd and incited the men to treat me as he wished.” She later had to seek medical attention for the bruising on her chest.

Over the course of the militant campaign, around 1,000 suffragettes were imprisoned in the UK, and many went on hunger strike and had to contend with the torturous process of force feeding. In 1913, the Cat and Mouse Act was brought in, a cruel law which meant suffragettes could hunger strike to the point of emaciation, be let out of prison to recover, recalled to serve a little more of their sentence, on and on, until the term was served.
The suffragettes kept going, despite the opposition and immediate consequences. Abrams describes a London action in the early 1910s when, “on two separate days, at a preordained time and with no warning, hundreds of smartly dressed women from Oxford Street to Whitehall, all along Piccadilly and Bond Street, produced hammers … and laid waste to hundreds of square feet of shop frontage.” Emmeline Pankhurst was one of 220 protesters arrested. Modern feminists might balk at some of the suffragettes’ more destructive actions, but their audacity is inspiring.

Publicity is power

The suffragettes were a creative whirlwind, constantly devising new ways to catch the attention of politicians and the public. On one occasion, two women posted themselves as human letters to Downing Street; on another, suffragettes boarded a boat, and sailed towards the terrace of parliament, where 800 people had gathered for tea. Once in clear view, they unveiled two banners, the first with details of their upcoming demonstration, the second stating: “Cabinet ministers especially invited.”

A report in the Daily Express, in 1909, told of the young suffragette Miss Muriel Matters, who “sailed aloft from Hendon in the diminutive basket of a cigar-shaped dirigible balloon, for the very latest thing in suffragist dashes to Westminster”. Matters dropped leaflets as she flew, finally returning to earth near Croydon, helped “by a friendly though rather startled farmer”.

The suffragettes staged a census boycott in 1911, during which women stayed out all night, on the basis: “If women don’t count, neither shall they be counted.” Some took to Wimbledon Common in horse-drawn caravans, others spent the night rollerskating around the Aldwych Rinkeries – the venue was kept open especially – and Davison hid herself in a broom cupboard in the House of Commons, with a small picnic of lime juice and meat lozenges. (Many years later, Tony Benn secretly put up a plaque in this cupboard, in tribute to Davison’s extraordinary contribution to democracy.)

If you’re trying to create a popular movement, you obviously need to be popular, and the suffragettes were: an estimated half a million people attended their Hyde Park demonstration in 1908. It was the publicity campaigns and the strength of the central message that brought them there, as well as the fact that being a suffragette must have looked exciting, a revolutionary approach to female life. There’s often tension today between those who deliver feminism with humour and those who prefer unfiltered anger – the suffragettes showed that both are necessary.

Strength through solidarity

There were often major splits in the suffrage movement but there was also enough solidarity to keep the mission afloat. One strong example arose in 1906, when Millicent Garrett Fawcett, the leader of the non-militant side of the movement, wrote to the Times in support of the militants. “I take this opportunity of saying that in my opinion,” she wrote, “far from having injured the movement, they have done more during the last 12 months to bring it within the realms of practical politics than we have been able to accomplish in the same number of years.” It was a generous statement from the woman whose conscientious campaigning, over the course of many years, is often credited with being the essential force in the fight for the vote.

Many of the suffragettes also recognised that women could be oppressed by factors beyond their sex, and went to great lengths to support their sisters. For instance, when Lady Constance Lytton was imprisoned in 1909, and quickly released, she was determined to expose the fact that working class suffragettes had faced much more brutal treatment than her. She therefore disguised herself as Jane Warton, a seamstress, travelled to Liverpool and staged a protest; she was imprisoned and force fed eight times, proving her point. This experience did her health no favours, and she went on to suffer a heart attack in 1910 and a series of strokes, but wasn’t deterred. Lytton’s dedication was such that she once carved a large “V” for “votes” into her own breast, and she continued to campaign for the suffrage cause until her death in 1923.

Never give up

Many feminsts today complain of burnout and fatigue over problems that seem to stretch ahead intractably. The suffragettes must have felt the same at times. Histories often focus on the last 20 years or so of the struggle, but women fought for the vote for more than a century, with Mary Wollstonecraft helping to kick off the campaign in 1792, in Vindication of the Rights of Woman, with a reference to the need for women’s political representation. Forty years later, in 1832, the first petition for the women’s vote was presented to the Commons, and over the course of the next century campaigners kept up the pressure – reinventing and re-energising their fight, and passing the baton from woman to woman. They were finally granted the vote on the same terms as men in 1928.

Accept victory – nothing else

There are often arguments today about who should represent feminism, but the suffrage fight suggests we need the whole spectrum: the rabble-rousers, theorists, dogged campaigners, sympathetic politicians, those whose wit draws women to the cause, those whose anger keeps them motivated, and those who quietly, conscientiously chip away at issues that make others give up in despair. We need those who refuse to see any conceivable option but victory. Women like the one who wrote to the Daily Telegraph in 1913. “Sir, Everyone seems to agree upon the necessity of putting a stop to Suffragist outrages; but no one seems certain how to do so. There are two, and only two, ways in which this can be done. Both will be effectual. 1. Kill every woman in the United Kingdom. 2. Give women the vote. Yours truly, Bertha Brewster.”

Fashion, feminism and politics has always been heated territory, and the suffragettes knew this and they used it for their cause. Instead of deploying a strategy of resistance by refusal, they chose resistance through reversal. They sought to effect change not by challenging contemporary fashion and ideals of femininity, but by conforming to them. Haunted by the stereotypical image of the “strong-minded woman” in masculine clothes, pebble-thick glasses and galoshes created by cartoonists, they chose instead to present a fashionable, feminine image.

The suffragettes took care to “appeal to the eye” – particularly when in full glare of media attention on parade or demonstrating. In 1908, one of their newspapers, Votes for Women, declared: “The suffragette of today is dainty and precise in her dress.” Five years later, sellers of the Suffragette were requested to “dress themselves in their smartest clothes”.

Share this:

Like this:

I am not an American, for I am an European. I don’t have to choose sides, because I don’t have sides, for I have rights and brains. This isn’t an article to praise someone or to victimize women, this is an article for freedom, for equal rights for women worldwide. It is a tribute to all the intelligent, successful, free and beautiful women, but also an alarm sign for mistreatment and abuse of women and children.

If Hillary Rodham Clinton chose as one of her policies the fight for human rights and especially women’s and children’s rights to be the front “of a smooth-talking neoliberal with the worst tendencies of a warrior-neoconservative” – it doesn’t really makes a difference, because mixing her political ways with her own beliefs has only created a new road for the feminist supporters, and if sometimes she couldn’t say her own opinions for example, she could agree with the civil partnership for same sex, but she couldn’t agree with same sex marriage yet, as a Secretary of State, but she agreed with it and sustained it later as a 2016 presidency candidate, this doesn’t blunt or cry down her merits in her battles for women’s rights, therefore Americans should be proud they have someone like Hillary recognized worldwide for her long-term fights for women’s and children’s rights and for LGBT rights, too.

Having a champion of women is a great step for America and if you look into the past, Americans always had champions for freedom, like Martin Luther King or Eleanor Roosevelt. That’s why women love Hillary Rodhan Clinton.

Here in Europe we have watched from a distance the political battles in the United States and also their fights on all battlegrounds around the world that have become international, in the search of the world’s domination and somewhere in the background, their struggle to maintain the world almost peace. When will Europe have such a fighter for women’s rights? Lady Diana, Princess of Wales is the best post modern example. Yulia Timoshenko, Ukraine’s former Prime Minister was a weak start, but Dalia Grybauskaite, the Lithunian President is a very promising ongoing.

The “Hillary Doctrine” is a term used to describe the agenda of former US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. In particular, the Hillary Doctrine refers to talks given by Clinton arguing that women’s rights and violence against women should be considered issues of national security. The doctrine encompasses stances she has held before, during, and after her tenure as secretary.

In the 1990’s during the times when Hillary was the first lady, she was an inspiring feminist role model and she represented the change. Hillary was the First Lady, not a candidate herself yet, so she had no reason to sustain any political view or to build a road to a campaign, she spoke her own mind. And, it is her great achievement that became a great achievement to all women to speak their own minds and take their own decisions, also with the great support of men.

“Perhaps, the Clintons have somehow managed to convince half the sane world that they should be the natural recipients of African-American votes, despite everything they have done, when in power, to erode the economic security of African Americans and other minorities; the false hope raised during the 1990s was that the economic boom, itself a mirage as it turned out, would eventually lead to significant wage gains, but that never happened.

Poor and minority women and children were drastically hurt by the welfare bill the Clintons so enthusiastically pushed through congress, and likewise all the policies, from trade to student aid, they pursued in the name of fiscal responsibility, cutting the deficit and the debt, and playing by Wall Street’s tune.”

What we didn’t know that much was the struggle of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s fights for women’s and children’s rights as a woman, a mother, a lawyer, a senator, a Secretary of State until , at least, I read “Hard Choices”.

In “Hard Choices” she spoke about the foreign policy issues she had to face during her being a Secretary of State, but also she stuck to the path to defend and make progress for women and children to have human rights all over the world.

She spoke of the nuclear danger coming from Iran and South Korea, she spoke of Libya and America’s role there, she spoke of the Arab Spring, she spoke of Egypt, Pakistan and Afganistan stringent issues and she spoke of China and the disident who wanted to go to America with his family, she spoke of Latin America and it’s issues and also on Africa, especially of the lack of women’s and children’s rights there and the need of world aid.

The most amazing story in “Hard Choices” was :”Burma -The lady and the generals” , the life of Aung San Suu Kyi, who was imprisoned and later convicted for home arrest for her political views for Burma to become a democracy. She tried to follow her father’s path, Aung San, was a former general who led Burma’s fight to independence from the British and Japanese only to be assassinated in 1947 by political rivals. Suun Kyi was first imprisoned in 1989 and she remained in house arrest ever since. Her husband was an Oxford professor and lived with their children there, for Suun Kyi refused to leave Burma, even to be with her family and later on her husband died without seeing her, for he was denied a visa to Burma by the government and Suu Kyi has never left her country. Now even try to imagine that kind of self-sacrifice for the love of your country.

”

”

”As Secretary of State, Clinton was not at liberty to address domestic political issues (such as same-sex marriage). On the international stage, however, and in keeping with the title of her memoir, Hard Choices, Clinton boldly asserted in Geneva in 2011: “Gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights.” It was a groundbreaking moment. She also told the international community “being LGBT does not make you less human.”

I also took a step back in Hillary’s past:

“As a young woman, Hillary was active in young Republican groups and campaigned for Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater in 1964. She was inspired to work in public service after hearing a speech in Chicago by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and became a Democrat in 1968.

Rodham attended Wellesley College, where she was active in student politics and elected senior class president before graduating in 1969. She then attended Yale Law School, where she met Bill Clinton. Graduating with honors in 1973, she went on to enroll at Yale Child Study Center, where she took courses on children and medicine and completed one post-graduate year of study.

Clinton worked at various jobs during her summers as a college student. In 1971, she first came to Washington, D.C. to work on U.S. Senator Walter Mondale‘s sub-committee on migrant workers. In the summer of 1972, she worked in the western states for the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern.

In the spring of 1974, Rodham became a member of the presidential impeachment inquiry staff, advising the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives during the Watergate Scandal. (Chief Counsel Jerry Zeifman would later contend that he fired Clinton from the committee for what he deemed as unethical professional behavior connected to Nixon’s due process. These allegations have been contradicted by other media sources that deny Zeifman’s authority over the young attorney at this time, with no comment from Clinton herself.)

After President Richard M. Nixon resigned in August, she became a faculty member of the University of Arkansas Law School in Fayetteville, where her Yale Law School classmate and boyfriend Bill Clinton was teaching as well.

Hillary Rodham married Bill Clinton on October 11, 1975, at their home in Fayetteville. Before he proposed marriage, Clinton had secretly purchased a small house that she had remarked that she liked. When he proposed marriage to her and she accepted, he revealed that they owned the house. Their daughter, Chelsea Victoria, was born on February 27, 1980.

In 1976, Hillary worked on Jimmy Carter‘s successful campaign for president while husband Bill was elected attorney general. Bill Clinton was elected governor in 1978 at age 32, lost reelection in 1980, but came back to win in 1982, 1984, 1986 (when the term of office was expanded from two to four years) and 1990.

Hillary joined the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock and, in 1977, was appointed to part-time chairman of the Legal Services Corporation by President Carter. As first lady of the state for a dozen years (1979-1981, 1983-1992), she chaired the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee, co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, and served on the boards of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital, Arkansas Legal Services and the Children’s Defense Fund. She also served on the boards of TCBY and Wal-Mart.

In 1988 and 1991, The National Law Journal named her one of the 100 most powerful lawyers in America.”

Then, of course the times when Hillary was the US first lady during Bill Clinton’s presidency, the times when she was the first female New York senator and , when she was running against Barack Obama for the democratic representative for presidency in 2010, also the boldest period when Hillary was secretary of state during the Obama presidency.

“During Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, Hillary emerged as a dynamic and valued partner of her husband, and as president he named her to head the Task Force on National Health Reform (1993). The controversial commission produced a complicated plan which never came to the floor of either house. It was abandoned in September 1994.

In 1999, Clinton decided she would seek the U.S. Senate seat from New York held by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was retiring after four terms. Despite early problems and charges of carpetbagging, Clinton beat popular Republican Rick Lazio by a surprisingly wide margin: 55 percent to 43 percent. Clinton became the first wife of a president to seek and win public office and the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate from New York. She easily won reelection in November 2006.

In early 2007, Clinton announced her plans to strive for another first—to be the first female president. During the 2008 Democratic primaries, Senator Clinton conceded the nomination when it became apparent that nominee Barack Obama held a majority of the delegate vote. When Clinton suspended her campaign, she made a speech to her supporters. “Although we were not able to shatter that highest and hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you it has 18 million cracks in it,” she said, “and the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time, and we are going to keep working to make it so, today keep with me and stand for me, we still have so much to do together, we made history, and lets make some more.”

Shortly after winning the U.S. presidential election, Obama nominated Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. She accepted the nomination and was officially approved as the 67th U.S. secretary of state by the Senate on January 21, 2009.

During her term, Clinton used her position to make women’s rights and human rights a central talking point of U.S. initiatives. She became one of the most traveled secretaries of state in American history, and promoted the use of social media to convey the country’s positions. She also led U.S. diplomatic efforts in connection to the Arab Spring and military intervention in Libya.

The State Department, under Clinton’s leadership, came under investigation after a deadly attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, killed U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others on September 11, 2012. An independent panel issued a report about the Benghazi attack, which found “systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies” at the State Department.”

So, Hillary Rodham Clinton had a fulminatory political career long before she became a First Lady and she was a women’s and children’s rights supporter long before that and she was just getting started and she started to become an icon for so many women, so it is normal that she had so many critics, but so many supporters also, meaning that she has been heard and she has been listen to.

I wanted to write this article from the moment I have heard Hillary’s Speech in Beijing at the Fourth World Conference on Women by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in collaboration with the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women Secretariat where she spoke up for women rights: “Women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights”.

I said to myself, this woman has guts to speak up the fundamental discrepancy between women’s rights in a men’s world, in so many different ways and at so many different levels : the gender differences from birth in so many countries until the wage differences paid for women less than for men that are doing the same job with the same responsabilities and risks. And this was in 1995 when in Eastern European countries politicians and country leaders were occupied with economic, monetary and industrial transition issues, in order to have a glimpse on the European Union, women’s rights where something so far away , in a country which was trying to be reborn from the ashes of communism.

Hillary Clinton’s speech for 1995’s Beijing Conference written by Gertrude Mongella has broken so many barriers at the time, and Hillary was the First Lady, not a candidate herself yet, so she had no reason to sustain any political view or to build a road to a campaign, she spoke her own mind. And it is her great achievement that became a great achievement to all women to speak their own minds and take their own decisions, also with the great support of men.

She spoke of women’s basic rights : “focusing world attention on issues that

matter most in the lives of women and their families: access to

education, health care, jobs, and credit, the chance to enjoy basic

legal and human rights and participate fully in the political life of

their countries”

“It is conferences like this that compel governments and peoples

everywhere to listen, look and face the world’s most pressing problems.”

“What we are learning around the world is that, if women are healthy and

educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence,

their families will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as

full and equal partners in society, their families will flourish.

And when families flourish, communities and nations will flourish.

That is why every woman, every man, every child, every family, and every

nation on our planet has a stake in the discussion that takes place

here.

Over the past 25 years, I have worked persistently on issues relating to

women, children and families. Over the past two-and-a-half years, I have

had the opportunity to learn more about the challenges facing women in

my own country and around the world.

The great challenge of this conference is to give voice to women

everywhere whose experiences go unnoticed, whose words go unheard.

Women comprise more than half the world’s population. Women are 70t

percent of the world’s poor, and two-thirds of those who are not taught

to read and write.

Women are the primary caretakers for most of the world’s children and

elderly. Yet much of the work we do is not valued -not by economists,

not by historians, not by popular culture, not by government leaders.

Speaking to you today, I speak for them, just as each of us speaks for

women around the world who are denied the chance to go to school, or see

a doctor, or own property, or have a say about the direction of their

lives, simply because they are women.

The truth is that most women around the world work both inside and

outside the home, usually by necessity.

We also must recognize that women will never gain full dignity until

their human rights are respected and protected. ”

Since Beijing, while the UN itself has devoted more attention to the status and conditions of women and some progress has been made, there have also been alarming developments. Violence against women has become an undeniable and widespread universal reality, and speaking out against it no longer a taboo, as it once was. Everything from rape as a weapon of war to sex trafficking to female genital mutilation (FGM) are far better understood, acknowledged and addressed in public discourse and policy.

With Hillary Clinton declaring her candidacy for the Democratic nomination on a gender-inflected program, the distance traveled from Beijing is considerable. The possibility of having a woman with power in the White House who at least has a track record in women’s rights, and who could yet have the political commitment, is a historic opportunity.

Regarding the psychological empowerment effects Clinton’s presidential victory would have on women’s mindsets, one relevant study assessing Hillary Clinton’s effects on improving performance under the threat of being stereotyped provided empirical evidence that “what an individual believes about a successful role model might moderate the effectiveness of that role model in overcoming stereotype threat” (Taylor et. al., 2011). One goal of the experiment was to identify women whom the participants deemed as successful or unsuccessful and the perceived causes; study participants who accounted Clinton as successful declared that “they would want her on their team, and thought their worry would be reduced by knowing she was” (Taylor et. al., 2011). Moreover, those who considered her having deserved her success invoked internal aspects, such as her ability, performance and sustained efforts, while the others cited external factors, associating her with Bill Clinton. The experiment assessed the participants’ performance on a mathematics test after reading the biography of Hillary Clinton, a non-domain role model, the positive results being consistent with “a mechanism in which effective role models undo stereotype threat effects merely by showing that the group can «take care of itself»” (Taylor et. al., 2011). Thus, beyond the policies, bills and laws a female political representative might promote in order to effectively represent gender interests in elected office, effects can be seen on a psychological level as well, as political women serve as role models; also, the debate created around a new woman’s election or appointment equally contributes to the cause.

So, Hillary took the “road not taken” :

Robert Frost

“If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely—and the right to be heard.

Let — Let this conference be our — and the world’s — call to action. Let us heed that call so we can create a world in which every woman is treated with respect and dignity, every boy and girl is loved and cared for equally, and every family has the hope of a strong and stable future. That is the work before you. That is the work before all of us who have a vision of the world we want to see — for our children and our grandchildren.”